Monthly Archives: January 2013

Dr. Alexey Yablokov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and co-author of “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment” (link available under blogroll) spoke in Tokyo on December 15, 2012 about the lessons of Chernobyl for the world suffering under Fukushima radiation.

Dr. Yablokov is an eminent authority on the effect of radioactivity on populations.

I attempted to transcribe his talk the best I could. Clearly he was struggling with English at some times.

We need to discuss what danger is now. We need to create a safe situation now. I studied the consequences of the situation. After 25 or 26 years after Chernobyl, you have some real data. What is the real data?

All people who inhabited territories with 1 curie per square kilometer have some negative health effect. This health effect is much bigger in areas with 5 curies per kilometer… You have to think about this. I think it is most important now to think and discuss the problem of how to minimize the consequences of Fukushima…

I will speak about lessons of Chernobyl for civil society. I understand how it is important for Japan. This book, published first time in Russia, after this in the United States, and last year in Ukraine, now under translation here in this country, and next year in Japan. It is the biggest, up-to-date, independent review of Chernobyl consequences.
This is one example. Look at this. Upper curve is a highly contaminated area after Chernobyl. Lower graphs are less contaminated, and average for Russia. It is obvious that the highly contaminated area has a much higher cancer rate. You have the same thing here, absolutely sure, in 5 years, 7 years.

These were caused by Chernobyl irradiation, the same will be caused by Fukushima irradiation. Blood and circulation system disorders, endocrine system disorders, immune system disorders, respiratory system disorders, reproductive disorders, musculoskeletal system disorders, central nervous system disorders. Even a small dose, if it impacts for several years, it is visible, it is possible to detect changes in the brain. We have strong evidence that Chernobyl irradiation has broken the brain. And not only cataract, but special ocular vitreous destruction.

Among other consequences of Chernobyl catastophe, premature aging. Premature aging is typical for any irradiation. It means even children looked like older people. And older people looked older than their physiological age.

Also, mutation. Mutation is very important. It is maybe the key to understanding the level of exposure. It is possible to count it directly in the blood.
This is a highly contaminated group, liquidators. These are persons who worked in clean-up operations at the Chernobyl station. We looked for frequency of miscarriages in their families. During two or three years after Chernobyl, miscarriages dropped, but look, half of pregnancies ended in miscarriage, during the first year after Chernobyl.
And this is lens opacity. One of the consequences of irradiation is with the lens of the eye. Lens opacity and the level of incorporated cesium-137 in Belarusian children. You can see a very good correlation.

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The next picture is thyroid cancer. We have a similar picture just now.

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One more. Breast cancer jumped 10 years after Chernobyl. Breast cancer going up in highly contaminated areas. The upper graph, more than 5 curies per square kilometer. Visible risings of breast cancer 10 years after the catastrophe. You will have here the same situation.

Nuclear specialists, IAEA specialist officials, blame people and call it “radiation phobia”. They call it not real radiation illnesses, just psychological, radiation phobia. But radiation phobia in frogs, in swallows, in wolves, in pine trees? When we observe absolutely the same health disorders, the same mutation rates that we have in people.

Nuclear specialists and nuclear journals do not publish real data. How is it possible to catch real data? To take official statistics, and look for this, here is one example. Mortality rates going up for several years after Chernobyl. This is the deviation of infant mortality from the long-term trend in Germany and Poland. It’s not Russia, not Belarus, not Ukraine, it is less contaminated than these three countries. But, in spite of this, we have such an effect. Visible statistical elevation of infant mortality.
After 1986, we have some unexpected risings of the level of mortality. Nobody can explain anything more than Chernobyl. Only Chernobyl. No reason, no reason. Why, in Norway, in Finland, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Poland, there are risings in infant mortality.
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This is Japan. A paper published two weeks ago. It calculates from official demographical data, published by the Japanese ministry of health and labor. You can see after Fukushima, in 2 months, and in 9 months, a visible rate of infant mortality going up. Obviously, it is Fukushima. But what is interesting, is that it is the data of the whole country, not near to Fukushima. We need to study it specially, carefully, in the Tokyo area, the north area, the south area. I expect that what we have here is very unpleasant data.

This is mortality for 6 highly contaminated territories in Russia, and 6 less contaminated territories. Mortality for 15 years, it obviously statistically differs. It is very spectacular that such different consequences arise for mortality. It is impossible to detect why it happened, but of course it is the result of Chernobyl.

If all plants, animals, micro-organisms which stand on the Chernobyl territory have a high level of mutation, it obviously is a result of Chernobyl. We have here the same. I know, as the result of study, butterflies, some birds around Fukushima, absolutely the same. In Chernobyl, we have the same effect like Fukushima. Less biodiversity, higher mutation rate, and genomic instability, such damage in animals and plants.

Some people who visit the Chernobyl zone for the first time think, “oh, how it flourishes”, because no people, and a lot of animals, and a lot of plants, but all plants have some chromosome damage. All animals find that it is not good to breed there, in the Chernobyl zone. They mostly come from other places, because there is no anthropogenic pressure. So the Chernobyl zone looks like a black hole.

The Chernobyl catastrophe demonstrates that the nuclear industry is willing to risk our planet with nuclear power, not only theoretically, but practically, at the same level of the risk to humanity as nuclear weapons.

Fukushima Diary has posted an item that the mayor of Futabamachi has been forced from office, due to his opposition of contaminated soil being stored in his town. The mayor made a parting comment:

“Shirakawa city of Fukushima has Auschwitz camp museum. It’s famous that the Nazis massacred Jewish with poisonous gas. Ironically enough, in Fukushima prefecture, our DNA is also massacred by radiation. There is no other option to guarantee our health than letting us evacuate as soon as possible… We are treated like guinea pig. It’s the same as a foreign tyrant launches missiles to us.”

This is true, not only in Fukushima prefecture, but all over the planet our DNA, our future generations, and our lives and all life on earth is being massacred by Fukushima radiation. We have all been herded into the shower, and instead of Zyklon-B coming out of the shower heads, it’s plutonium, cesium-137 and strontium-90. The politicians, pundits, internet shills, and sellout academics keep assuring us that what is coming out of the shower heads, it’s perfectly safe, it is even good for you. This is done to keep order in the showers.

The giant mega-corporation known as MYSTERY BABYLON, which claims authority over all people, multitudes, nations, and tongues, and which counts all corporations, governments, and major social institutions as its subsidiaries, is turning Planet Earth into an EXTERMINATION CAMP.

We are the inmates of the camp. But just like in 1945, when the death camps were liberated by the Allies, we have a Lamb coming to free us. Are you with him?

Fukushima Diary is reporting that a Japanese lawyer stated that 5 people in Soma City, Japan died of acute leukemia last year. This lawyer added that information like this is being concealed by the Japanese government.

So I investigated this to see if this leukemia mortality incidence might have something to do with Fuku. The age-standardized death rate is not really the same as the raw death rate, but typically they are very close, so we may use this rate to compute an expected number of leukemia deaths in 2012:

36891 x .000031 = 1.143621

The observed deaths were 5, with a rate of 5 / 36891 = .000135 . Note that all the leukemia deaths were from the acute variety, the info did not include deaths from chronic or other types of leukemia. So this analysis may be conservative.

Next these two proportions were compared using exact binomial statistics. The one-tailed probability of the event of death by leukemia occurring 5 or more times was P < .007 . This value is below the typical threshold of .05 (95% confidence), and also the more stringent threshold of .01 (99% confidence). But, since this a discrete statistic, this value is excessively conservative. Since our data may also be conservative to begin with, we don’t want to compound the problem, and reduce the statistical power of a dataset which already has small values. A solution generally recommended by mathematical statisticians to overcome this issue is to use mid-P probability. Here, we would take the probability of the event occurring 5 or more times, and the probability of the event occurring more than 5 times, and average them. This yields a value of P < .004, a stronger result.

It was mentioned that this is a one-tailed probability. What we are doing is setting up a null hypothesis, testing this hypothesis, and in rejecting it, we accept the alternative hypothesis:

It has been known for many decades that radiation causes leukemia, there is the atomic bomb study and many many other studies that show this. But there is a theory called “hormesis” that says radiation protects people from cancer and leukemia. Even though there is not a shred of evidence for this ridiculous theory, sociopathic entities like the nuclear industry and the US Department of Energy continue to fund research that make this claim. Scientists see this and think, “Hmmm, maybe we better allow for the possibility that radiation is good for you”. This entails the use of two-tailed hypotheses:

The value we get for this dataset using two-tailed binomial statistics is P < .008 . It still rejects the null hypothesis at the strict .01 (99% confidence) level. But you can see how in other experiments, this might make the difference between a statistically significant result and a nonsignificant one. Hormesis is a trick used to reduce statistical power. It is especially egregiously bad in small datasets like this one, typically seen for thyroid cancer and leukemia deaths.

But there’s more. The epidemiology protocol usually doesn’t use simple exact binomial or other statistics. What they do is fit the data to a normal distribution and use a z-test or other tests based on this distribution. The problem is that 5 deaths are too small to make a reliable fit. And typically, nobody actually does any tests, or provides any evidence that the distribution is normal anyway. Plugging our data into the z-test yields P < .061 (one-tail) and P < .121 (two-tail). This does not qualify as significant according to the .05 level, and the two-tail doesn’t even work at the loose criterion of .10 . So we have:

Correct P < .004
Likely found P < .121

You have to wonder how many studies are like this. Instead of having a powerful result, that satisfies the strict criterion, we would see “We found no evidence that radiation caused leukemia deaths in Soma City”. Or even worse, we might see “There is no evidence that radiation causes leukemia deaths”, which is a non sequitur. It is a short hop and skip from this to “We expect no health impacts in the United States from Fukushima radiation”.

I wanted to add some recent measurements of iodine-131 in Japanese sewage sludge. We can see that there was a massive release of I-131 in August and September. This has decayed by now, and any iodine-131 floating around originated after this event. Of course, there is probably iodine-129 too, which is rarely reported, and hangs around for 157 million years.

A small victory here in this state. The Maryland Public Service Commission has voted to require power companies to provide additional options to measure electrical use in homes, other than smart meters. Presumably, or hopefully, this will lead to an opt-out condition for installation of these meters. Of course, you’ll have to pay extra.

Smart meters emit pulsed RFR (radio frequency radiation). The power companies would tell you that this non-iodizing radiation is much less than that from a microwave oven (which I don’t have). But this radiation is modulated, and pulsed, it shoots up briefly and repeatedly to sky-high levels. This is much different from a simple stream of microwaves.

Also, being an audiophile, I am very aware how these modulations enter into the home wiring. This radiation will not be confined to the area around the smart meter, it will be all over the home. I have put a lot of thought and care to eliminate RFR and digital jitter in my rig. So this is not only going to affect by health, but my hobby too.

The whole purpose of this smart meter crap is to eliminate meter reader jobs. They don’t want to pay people. If they cared, they could also hook up these meters with coaxial or fiber-optic cable, which would be shielded from RFR, instead of using wireless transmission. The cost of this would be a matter of relative nickles and dimes. But our lives are not worth a nickle to these a-holes.

I would like to call your attention to the BioInitiative 2012 report, which I just came across. It is subtitled “A Rationale for a Biologically-based Exposure Standards for Low-Intensity Electromagnetic Radiation”. This strikes me as similar in spirit and tone to the ECRR standards for low doses of ionizing radiation, led by Chris Busby. In fact, the effects of low intensity electromagnetic radiation seems to be indistinguishable from those of ionizing (nuclear) radiation, in many ways. From p. 1429 of the pdf which is linked:

An urgent example for the need to address the lack of adequate public protection from inadequate safety standards for pulsed RFR exposures is the rapid, global rollout of wireless utility meters (‘smart’ meters for electricity, gas and water meters). Current safety standard calculations that rely on time-averaging of RFR almost entirely dilute out the power density of RFR levels that are delivered in millisecond bursts, but occur at intervals of every second, or multiple times per second when in use within a wireless mesh network. Said differently, the RFR power density levels are usually legal. While there have been no long term studies of adverse effects of smart meters on human health (primarily because they are so new), there are increasing reports from electrosensitive individuals of harm. Added together, these RFR pulses that now appear to be a highly bioactive agent but are essentially erased or made energetically invisible by time-averaging the pulses as current FCC safety rules mandate.

The FCC safety rules ignore the fact that RFR is delivered in bursts. The time-averaging of the pulses make it look like everything is OK.

The ‘smart meter’ infrastructure represents the largest single commercial saturation of living space with pulsed RFR yet rolled out by industry. This program places a wireless device (like a mini-mobile phone base station) on the wall, replacing the electromechanical (spinning dial) meter. They will be installed on every home and classroom (every building with an electric meter). Utilities from California to Maine have installed tens of millions already, despite health concerns of experts who already are seeing thousands of health complaints. The wireless meters produce spikes of pulsed radiofrequency radiation on a continuous basis (24/7), and in typical operation, will saturate living space at levels that can be much higher than already reported to cause bioeffects and adverse health effects for some people. These meters, depending on where they are placed relative to occupied space in the home or classroom, can produce RFR exposure levels similar to that within the first 100 feet to 600 feet of a mobile phone base station (cell tower)…

“Wireless technologies drive electromagnetic energy through our air, into and through virtually all indoor and outdoor living environments. The protective air cushion around our planet holds breathable air, buffers us from space radiation, and supports and sustains life in tandem with the natural electromagnetic signature of the earth itself. We are changing this ‘commons of the air‘ in major ways. Wireless signals from broadcast and communications technologies are crowding out and overpowering the natural background. The ‘commons of the air’ is being altered in unprecedented ways that have enormous consequences for life on earth.” (Sage, 2010)…

The BBB is a protective barrier that prevents the flow of toxins into sensitive brain tissue. Increased permeability of the BBB caused by cell phone RFR may result in neuronal damage. Many research studies show that very low intensity exposures to RFR can affect the blood-brain barrier (BBB) (mostly animal studies). Summing up the research, it is more probable than unlikely that non-thermal EMF from cell phones and base stations do have effects upon biology. A single 2-hr exposure to cell phone radiation can result in increased leakage of the BBB, and 50 days after exposure, neuronal damage can be seen, and at the later time point also albumin leakage is demonstrated. The levels of RFR needed to affect the BBB have been shown to be as low as 0.001 W/kg, or less than holding a mobile phone at arm’s length. The US FCC standard is 1.6 W/kg; the ICNIRP standard is 2 W/kg of energy (SAR) into brain tissue from cell/cordless phone use. Thus, BBB effects occur at about 1000 times lower RFR exposure levels than the US and ICNIRP limits allow.

Combine this with radionuclides in our bodies from Fukushima. We all have substances like cesium-137 and plutonium-239 in our blood now. The blood-brain barrier is damaged from even holding a cell phone at arm’s length. What happens? The plutonium goes INTO THE BRAIN. You can add fungi to this, which is on every tree I can see in this area. Then you have the same situation as those patients who were shot up with fungus-contaminated steroids, and got fungal meningitis.

This is just one effect. Here are some other conclusions found in the BioInitiative PDF:

BIOEFFECTS ARE CLEARLY ESTABLISHED

BIOEFFECTS WITH CHRONIC EXPOSURES CAN REASONABLY BE
PRESUMED TO RESULT IN ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS

ELF-EMF AND RFR ARE CLASSIFIED AS POSSIBLE CANCER-CAUSING
AGENTS – WHY ARE GOVERNMENTS NOT ACTING?

I have a cell phone, which I rarely use. But I have a DECT cordless phone, I really need to replace this. My home network is wired (which works much better than wireless anyway). I get 5 bars on the cell phone, this is not good… I live pretty much in the middle of town. It’s bad enough with Fuku and all the other toxins in the environment, without having to be affected by electromagnetic radiation too.

Human Health Rights Declaration
Fundamental Human Health Rights

The right to homeostasis in our own bodies.
The right to normal central nervous system function.
The right to natural environmental cues that synchronize our circadian rhythms.
The right to sleep.
The right to heal.
The right to hear.
The right to reproduce.
The right to learn and retain memories.
The right to an intact genome.

If even one of these rights is compromised – placed at risk from involuntary wireless exposures in daily life, it is a breach of human health rights. When many of these human health rights are compromised without the consent of the individual, then the deployment of wireless technologies should be halted and existing exposures reduced or eliminated, in accord with the scientific and public health findings on chronic exposure to low-intensity radiofrequency radiation, and other forms of potentially harmful electromagnetic fields (Sage and Huttunen, 2012).

Aug. 28: These images are from a dive yesterday at Anini Reef. This infectious coral disease has spread very rapidly all over the reef. 1 year ago there were 2 infections in our 100-meter transect, 4 weeks ago there was 80 infections and yesterday virtually every coral was infected! Over 500 beautiful rice corals! The disease is turning the corals black as it kills them. The infectious patches on the corals are growing faster, many of them at a rate of two inches a week.

Anini Reef is the largest barrier reef in Hawaii. We are currently monitoring 10 separate dive sites along the reef, and they are now ALL infected with tens of thousands of corals dying.

The water in the lagoon smells and has lots of long stringy algae… At the current rate of this disease spreading at Anini, Tunnels, Wainiha and other places we will lose much of the reefs within 5 years or less.

Sept. 12: Kauai’s Honu (Green Sea Turtle and the Hawksbill) are facing another serious problem, after coming back from the brink of extinction.

Today many of our turtles are growing tumors on their faces and in their throats, causing starvation and eventual death. This outbreak coincides with the extremely rapid bacterial infection of Kauai’s reefs.

Nov. 30: “Given the scale of the event, the large numbers of corals affected, and the consistent preponderance of a few agents (cyanobacteria and fungi) associated with gross lesions that look similar in both Makua and Anini, this outbreak would have to qualify as an epidemic. This is the first time a cyanobacterial/fungal disease on this scale has been documented in Hawaiian corals.” Dr. Thierry Work, head of USGS Infectious Diseases.

The waters on the reef were laden with particulates, and throughout the reef, corals (mainly Montipora capitata) were encroached by sediments and turf algae (Fig. 1b). Live coral cover appeared unusually low as compared to what would be expected on a healthy reef (Fig. 1c). Gross lesions in affected corals occupied ca. 10-80% of the colonies and manifested as distinct semi-circular to amorphous areas of tissue loss revealing bare skeleton covered by amorphous flocculent black to grey material with a distinct black band delineating normal tissues (Fig. 1d); clumps of what appeared to be sediment covered dead skeleton and borders of the lesions (Fig. 1e).The overall picture at Anini was one of a severely degraded reef impacted by sediments and turf algae. Microscopic changes evident in tissues of “non-lesion” corals were suggestive of animals undergoing some sort of chronic stress (inflammatory cells, foci of necrosis, degenerating gastrodermis, loss of symbiotic algae). Cyanobacteria alone were most commonly (59%) associated with lesions with fungal infections affecting
an additional 29% of corals. No other bacteria or other associated agents were seen. The microscopic findings for Anini and Makua were very similar. Based on the large percentage (59%) of corals affected by cyanobacteria only at Anini, I suspect this organism is playing a primary role in causing lesions with the likelihood that fungi may pose a complicating factor. In aggregate, 88% of corals with lesions at Anini are infected with cyanobacteria and fungi, and these organisms affect M. capitata at Anini and M. patula at Makua. The presence of cyanobacteria and fungi could explain the transmissibility and spread of the lesions observed in the field at both sites.

Blooming cyanobacteria can produce cyanotoxins in such concentrations that they poison and even kill animals and humans. Cyanotoxins can also accumulate in other animals such as fish and shellfish, and cause poisonings such as shellfish poisoning.

Among cyanotoxins are some of the most powerful natural poisons known, including poisons which can cause rapid death by respiratory failure.[1] The toxins include potent neurotoxins, hepatotoxins, cytotoxins, and endotoxins. Recreational exposure to cyanobacteria can result in gastro-intestinal and hay fever symptoms or pruritic skin rashes.[2] It has been suggested that significant exposure to high levels of some species of cyanobacteria may cause Lou Gehrig’s disease, but there is no firm evidence.

We have already seen in this blog how radiation promotes the growth of fungi, and how these fungi accumulate radionuclides.

This criticality, which is still in progress and increasing in severity, has generated a radioactive plume which will add to the already unprecedented radioactive pollution of North America. The usual suspects in the Pacific Northwest and southern British Columbia will be the first to experience this Happy New Year present from Tepco. It will then move through the US and hit the east coast. Additionally, a low pressure area will move down the California coast Sunday through Tuesday, which will collect these radionuclides and deliver them in the form of rain, including northern Baja and Arizona.

These radiation releases will keep happening, seemingly endlessly, until the coriums are removed from under the nuclear reactors, and all nuclear fuel is removed from all reactors and spent fuel pools at Daiichi. There is no will or effort being made to undertake this huge task. The legacy of cancer, sickness of all kinds, genetic damage, autism, fungal contamination, and death in the near future has already grown to unimaginable proportions, and continues to increase every day.